reagan, president clinton, all signed a debt deal that were contingent on raising the debt ceiling. you yourself have done that. three times those were related to budget reduction maneuvers. what chuck and i and many are curious on is your adamant desire not to negotiate when that seems to conflict with the entire history in the modern american presidents with the debt ceiling and your own debt ceiling, and doesn't that suggest that we are going to go into a default situation because nobody is talking about how to resolve this. >> no, major, i think if you look at the history, getting votes for the debt ceiling is always difficult. and budgets in this town are always difficult. i went through this just last year. but what's different is we never saw a situation, as we saw last year, in which certain groups in congress took such an absolutist position, that we came within a few days of defaulting. and the fact of the matter is that we have never seen the debt ceiling used in this fashion, where the notion was, you know what, we might default unless we get 100% of what we want. that h